Hero: Flight Lieutenant Bill Reid was awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery on a bombing raid on Germany in 1943

Eight years after his death, his family decided to sell the VC. It was bought, with Flight Lieutenant Reid's other medals, by a woman collector.

He was flying at 21,000ft above the Dutch coast, his Lancaster bomber in a stream of hundreds heading for the target city of Dusseldorf, when it was hit by machine gun fire from a German Messerschmitt 110 fighter.

The windscreen of his plane shattered in a blinding flash, leaving Flight Lieutenant Reid with a head wound. In temperatures of -40C, blood from the wound began freezing in his eyes.

He later recalled: 'We were really hit, and we started to spin down. My hands were a bit bloody, skinned, really, when the windscreen shattered.'

The aircraft dived 2,000ft before he could regain control. Asked by a crew member if he was OK, Reid said he felt 'all right' as he 'could see no purpose in worrying the crew'.

Breathing from an oxygen tank, he flew the Lancaster the 200 miles to its target, a heavily defended industrial site.

After dropping its bombs his plane was attacked again, raked with cannon fire which killed the navigator and wounded the radio operator.

He flew back through a heavy flak barrage to reach Norfolk, where he crash-landed.

Share this article

As the crew were evacuated, Flight Lieutenant Reid discovered that one of his men was dead and two others were wounded.

Asked in hospital by a senior officer why he did not turn back, he said the idea had never occurred to him.

Battle for the skies: Bill Reid flew Lancaster bombers during World War Two

He was posted to 617 Squadron, the elite Dambusters, and his last operation was on a V2 rocket storage dump near Rheims.

But his aircraft was hit by a bomb dropped by another Lancaster 6,000ft higher. He bailed out and spent the rest of the war in a German PoW camp. Afterwards, he studied at Glasgow University and became an agricultural adviser.

A married father of two, he died aged 79 in Crieff, Perthshire. Mark Quayle, of auctioneers Spink, said: 'This was a fully justified price reflective of a remarkable act of gallantry.'

The medal will stay in the country. Collector Melissa John said she had bought it in memory of her brother, Christopher who died last year aged only 47.

Miss John, from Wales, sobbed as she added: 'I collected medals with him. He always wanted a VC.' The world record for a VC is £491,567 paid in Sydney, Australia.